How do you manage your patterns in FL?

[Rabid]

I'm hoping for some tips to streamline my work flow.

Here is what I do. - I start out with some standard drum patterns and I separate the various drum parts; bass, hihat, snare, etc. I create variants on the pattern for each drum and keep them in separate patterns. So I have a collection of patterns for each individual drum and pant in the parts to control builds. I name the patterns and group them together; bass drum, then HiHat, then snare, etc. This makes it easier to pant in patterns and see what is going on. I do the other parts the same way. Bass usually follows drums, then pads, arps, leads, etc.

Here is my problem. - Using this method I easily exceed 100 patterns. Late in a song if I want to throw in a change up on drum I create the patterns and then go through the long process of shifting them up the list one spot at a time. The play list also gets so deep that I cannot visualize the song.

What I wish. - I wish there was a way to group patterns of the same channel into one line and then choose pattern number, much like you do in Reason or Orion. Just one line for bass drum.

How are other people handling this? Am I missing something?

[jmbriley]

You are doing too much. This is what works best. Take pattern one. It seems as though you are using sampler channels but the FPC would be the same principle. In one pattern but your kick, snare, hats and whatever in that one pattern in different channels. Now program your drums and that is pattern 1. Copy all of the channels in pattern 1 into pattern 2. Now make changes to the drums ie. take out a snare add a bass drum. You should be able to do some nice drums with slightly changing patterns in maybe 4-5 patterns. 100 that is ridiculous. Botton line is don't have each different drum sound on its own pattern but on its own channel within the pattern.

[Ebenezer Squeezer]

Probably the easiest way to manage drums is to use piano roll. After you've gotten most of your patterns done, you can use "flatten selected" and "merge selected" to lump everything into one (or several large) patterns with all the drum parts in them. That also makes editing easier as you can loop a section in the playlist (ctrl + hold down left mouse button) and make changes to the drums. You can also make changes to velocity, panning, and pitch of individual notes from one spot.

Does that help?

[mannikin]

Ditto.. this is the best way to work with FL's patterns. Couldn't have said it better myself.

J.

You are doing too much. This is what works best. Take pattern one. It seems as though you are using sampler channels but the FPC would be the same principle. In one pattern but your kick, snare, hats and whatever in that one pattern in different channels. Now program your drums and that is pattern 1. Copy all of the channels in pattern 1 into pattern 2. Now make changes to the drums ie. take out a snare add a bass drum. You should be able to do some nice drums with slightly changing patterns in maybe 4-5 patterns. 100 that is ridiculous. Botton line is don't have each different drum sound on its own pattern but on its own channel within the pattern.

[raikard233]

I never used patterns and playlist....i did all over the piano roll, entire songs and automations on a single pattern..

[Rellik]

I personally find that it's more useful to program all the different drum elements in the SAME pattern - I just think it works much better to keep the elements together if you're going to be doing anything that actually requires thought, so you can get a good overview of the rhythm (step sequencer is great for this, initially, then if you need to work in finer detail you can just convert to piano roll).

Then you can do one of two things: paint a number of this same 1-bar pattern in a row and select "merge" (or was it flatten? forget which is which, just do whichever one is the right one ), or you can clone the pattern and use the clones to create variations. Say you paint 4 of the pattern and merge it into a 4-bar pattern, then you can more easily micromanage and compare the different bars for more complex stuff - for more formulaic stuff it would be better to use the cloning+variation method, so you can create fills and variations and then rearrange them at will.

Although I'm sure it's better for some applications to do the elements separately so you can get more milage out of each of your variations (mix and match, etc.), most of the time, at least for me, it ends up being too frustrating, if you are looking for a more cohesive and finely-crafted percussion section, to keep having to go back and forth.

Same goes with melodic parts, for me - I like to keep all (or most) of the instruments that play during any given section together in the same pattern where I can see them in Ghost channels, and where it's easy to go back and forth and edit them without losing my train of thought. There are times where you'll want to separate out individual parts into their own patterns, for easier repetition or variation (for example this often happens with bass - if you don't know perfectly what's going on in your bass melodically and rhythmically, then you probably need to get it in your head - and once you have a bass down you're less likely to change it, since that would have so much of an impact on everything built on top of it, so sometimes it's advantageous to just get it out of the way in its own pattern where you can repeat it and move it around at will - same applies for any other instrument if that's what's the real center of what you're working on (maybe piano or rhythm guitar, for example))

Most of your optimal workflow is going to be determined by your own personal style and preferences - if you're working on ambient stuff, then yeah, keeping everything together in a couple of patterns is going to not only be more frustrating but will probably make you less likely to be organic with the various elements of the mix, coming in and out at independent variations - whereas for orchestral [especially complex orchestral], if you think you can survive without having the full score right there where you can rapidly make changes to a number of parts at the same time... well, it's frustrating enough as it is, imo

[The Chase]

I never used patterns and playlist....i did all over the piano roll, entire songs and automations on a single pattern..

What a painstaking way to do it! Each to their own.

I will make a bass melody, and label it "bass 1", or if i have multiple basses It will be "Bass 1-1". Then I will copy that bass pattern and paste it into the next pattern and label it "Bass 2", or in the case of multiple basses "Bass 1-2". If the Second pattern isnt a completely different melody but just a varient of the original bass pattern, I will label it "Bass 1v" or "Bass 1-1v"

With Breaks (DnB, Hip Hop, Breaks, electro, etc) I will put all the percussion channels (kick snare hat, etc etc) on each pattern so each pattern is the whole beat, and each additional pattern is just varients of the entire break. This is following the same pattern-naming system as in the bass example.

But with 4/4 (trance, house, some electro) I usually have a kick/snare/hat pattern, with each varient just being something like "Kick 2" etc etc.

Sometimes when My system gets jumbled I'll throw on buzzwords like "Sillies" or "Fucky squirrels".

---->My advice is to find the system that works best for you and just use that one. There is no "best" way.

[bluedad]

edit

[arke]

It really depends on the genre and the song itself what works best.

But you'Re right, I'd love folder tracks or such in FL.

[Rabid]

I think my problem is I do so many changeups. I don't want the music to sound like a dozen patterns. I want it to sound like a group of people playing the entire lenth of the song while adding frills and altering their parts. Because of this, combining multiple instruments into the same pattern would cause me to have a different pattern each measure.